


The Touching of Lips

by Prinzenhasserin



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: 5 Times, Assumptions, M/M, Mutual Pining, near misses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-16 14:29:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13055883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prinzenhasserin/pseuds/Prinzenhasserin
Summary: 5 Times Costis wanted to kiss Kamet, and the one time he did.





	The Touching of Lips

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sour_Idealist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sour_Idealist/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! Hope you enjoy this :D

 

**[Thea]**

Costis held the axe far over his head and drove it down with vigour, imagining the block of wood as a particular likeness of Eugenides, who had sent him home exactly during harvest season, and was probably rubbing his hands in glee, having successfully gotten rid of him. Taking the now smaller pieces, he threw them on the pile of wood carefully stacked against the barn. 

"You’ve gotten so slow over the years of lazing around in the capital!" his younger sister shouted, and leaned out of the barn door on the upper level. She was heaving around some of the extra wine barrels they kept there in reserve—Costis would have volunteered his help, except his fear of heights hadn’t exactly abated with the dubious protection afforded by his patron’s patron. "Why, you’re taking longer with the wood than our newest knave!"

"You would know," groused Costis. His sister thought his days at the King’s court were filled with twiddling his thumbs and taking hot baths, and he had stopped trying to convince her otherwise. She was more stubborn than he, and besides, what was wrong with taking a hot bath once in a while? Thea herself was quite partial to them.

"Ha! At least I’m not sighing every five minute for my lost love, like another person I could mention," his sister shouted down, conveniently only gaining the hearing of a fox when it would result in her getting the better of him.

"I’m not pining!" he shouted back, forgetting to keep quiet. 

And faster than you could blink, his father had appeared, and with interest in his voice and a sparkle in his eyes, asked, "Costis? Have you found love at last? Have you stopped denying the handsome visage of your compatriots?"

Costis groaned, deep and heartfelt. "I was on a mission among the Mede! Alone!"

"A desert princess perhaps? Or, I know! A love that developed on enemy territory, attraction that could not hide behind animosity, star-crossed lovers divided by fate…"

Costis lobbed the empty bucket conveniently lying around at Thea, and mouthed, 'Look what you’ve done!' but she only continued smirking.

"You kissed them at least, right? You know how to do that, at least, even if you cannot be trusted with the firewood any longer?"

Costis kept his head down, and focused on driving his axe through another log of wood. They were all driven mad by the harvest, they didn’t know what they were saying, and were drunk from the fermented wine fumes slowly settling over the estate besides, he thought uncharitably. He sighed. Kamet would have loved seeing the huge fermentation tubs, and the process of testing for sugar, and probably even Thea, curse her curiosity.

 

[ **Aris]**

"Have you seen your Mede spy yet?" Aris asked him, before they even finished the long intricate greeting of brothers-in-arms.

Costis couldn’t keep away his grimace. "Not you, too," he said, before he could quite stop himself.

Aris grinned, "Been pining that badly, huh?"

"More like missing the ugly that is your face."

Aris laughed. "Say hello to Thea from me in your next letter," he said, and finished the greeting with a slap on Costis’s back. "There’s a request from the King to see you as soon as you are back, so I’d go see to him if I were you, before anything else. Your Mede has been pining away in the library for you this whole time." Aris clasped his shoulder, then put another slap on Costis’ butt. "Go get him! He’s quite cute, if you like them that tall and scrawny."

Costis opened his mouth, and then closed it, without knowing what to say to that. Aris grinned outrageously, and hefted his sword on his shoulder.

Costis only found a reply, when the commander had called Aris over. 

"We’re not a thing," Costis shouted after his turned back. 

Aris didn’t turn, only waved carelessly, and Costis wanted to be back at home logging wood to work off his frustrations. Instead, he signed himself into the roster, and then went to see if he could work his frustrations out on the King. 

 

 **[Eugenides]**  

"I see you are back," the King said, hanging upside down from the chair, while one of his attendants tried to put him into a brocade jacket. "Have you gone to see your other half yet? He’s been missing you terribly." Costis was only halfway through the door, and already he wanted to turn back around and leave again. He stayed, instead.

Costis did not think the King had interacted much with Aris, but they obviously had to be in cahoots, coming up with the same analogy. Either way, that was when he thought of Kamet and flushed hot. Kamet, who had disdained every minute he spent in the Attolian palace, and had, knowing him, spent most of his time in the library— the same library frequented by Eugenides.

The King looked at him knowingly. "He’s been tyrannising his guards by doing nothing but reading all week—he’s been longingly staring at the wall for long stretches of time. Truly, if I had known he would be that happy with a soldier, I’d have sent him one long ago." His King mustered him from top to bottom. "Well, most scholars are shallow, and that just proves it."

Costis stood straight, letting the teasing roll over him as if it were coming from his sister, and not his King.

Eugenides sighed dramatically. Then he said, "For your services to the Crown, thank you. You are dismissed. Report to the Secretary of Archives for your next mission, and then, kiss your darling from me."

Costis flushed, if it was humanly possible, even harder. The King wasn’t even looking at him anymore, his attendant having managed to get him to pay attention. The other attendants, fulfilling other duties, didn’t look at him. He was imagining Kamet, in the palace’s library, surprised to see him. Taking a proprietary step towards him, stroking his hair, his face. Pressing lips softly against each other, good because it was a kiss, better because it would be with Kamet.

"Go," the King said. "Hurry, before he leaves without you."

 

**[Captain of the Ship]**

"Pairs usually share a hammock between them," the ship captain said, and looked meaningfully at Costis, who tried to figure out what the man was talking about but felt like he was missing important context clues. Helplessly, he looked for Kamet.

"I know landfolk may be uncomfortable about that, but we sea-faring types are used to it," he continued, and Costis still couldn’t figure out what he was talking about.

"We aren’t a pair," Costis said finally, since the captain seemed to want an answer. It was the wrong answer apparently, because his face closed off. "It’s not like that." Costis tried to defend himself, but from the stormy look, he was only digging his hole deeper. "He doesn’t want me like that," he finished, more despondently. "He hates—uh, Attolians. And soldiers."

The captain's face cleared. "People don’t look like that at the people they hate, boy," he said. "Take a hammock. Share it. The problem will resolve itself." 

It did not take Costis further towards his ultimate goal of, someday, maybe, kissing Kamet, but it did feel good to share a hammock during the cold nights out at the sea, even though they did not talk about it. 

When they left the ship, Costis looked back towards the sea captain. He was embracing his first mate from behind, very closely, closer than brothers-in-arms, probably, and Costis longed for that sort of closeness, and didn’t know how to get it himself.

 

**[Kamet]**

"I was thinking the other day," Kamet said, and Costis looked up from where he was studying the movement marks for the Mede ships he had put down. Soon, he would encrypt them, and then they would be shipped out with all the other post towards Ephrata. "You had a stable posting in Attolia. Why would you follow along with me, protecting a former slave, instead of protecting the King and earning glory?"

"Glory is overrated," Costis said glumly. He was longing for a good spar, and a bath—but he could spare all that to be far away from Gen and his whims and the court with its intrigue, if he was with Kamet instead.

When he looked up, Kamet was only a sliver away from him. He could feel the warmth coming from him, racking up tension in the air.

"But you love Attolia, and still you went with me," Kamet whispered, and Costis could hear it loud and clear. His eyes were especially dark, the candlelight glinting inside them. Costis swallowed. "Yes," he said inanely. He could have counted the hairs on his eyelids, could have pushed himself to meet him in a kiss, could have traced Kamet’s cupid’s bow with his fingers—

The door tore open, and Kamet jumped back. Costis started missing the proximity immediately. "Did I interrupt something?" the intruder— the vilicus of the estate— said blithely, and then continued with the actual matter of concern, Kamet’s potential offer of watching over the children of the domus, possibly teaching them. 

Costis sighed, dejectedly. 

 

 **[Costis]**  

Costis had been logging wood for the past few hours, trying not to think about Kamet’s lips, and Kamet’s new glasses, and Kamet’s hands, and the inkstains on his everything, and the way he’d scratch his ears, and he had had it with the thinking and pining and repressing his desire.

It had started to rain—pour, really—and he was now striding down the hallways dripping, but with purpose. 

Kamet was not in their rooms. Costis let out a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding, but the nervous energy wasn’t dissipating, and he would not let go of his desire—he went towards the library. 

Kamet was bent over a desk, and looked up when Costis entered. He was halfway out of the chair by the time Costis had arrived in front of him, a question on his lips. Costis pulled him all the way up, and then planted a kiss on his lips, finally.

It was like coming home; despite the fact that the water running down his back, and front, and everywhere, was wet and cold, he felt warmth surge up inside of him, elation at the fact that he was finally— finally!— kissing Kamet.

He didn’t let go.

Kamet’s lips were soft and welcoming, and warm, oh gods, the sheer warmth of them was glorious after the cold rain outside. He smelled like books and clean clothes, and the dry fire, and Costis did not know why this was the first time he had kissed him, even though he wanted to, so much. 

Kamet’s hands came up to rest on his face, stroking along the sides of his face. Kamet didn’t let him go for a few long moments, then let him have a sliver of space to catch his breath. Their faces rested against each other, and Kamet didn’t let go either.

"Kiss me again," he demanded, and Costis did.


End file.
